


Expense Report

by 13th_blackbird



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Bureaucracy, Epistolary, F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Only One Bed, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 05, Sharing a Bed, casefic, cryptid sightings, kind of, mulder knows scully's pizza order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 14:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19465984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13th_blackbird/pseuds/13th_blackbird
Summary: The Bureau conducts an audit, and Scully considers the costs.--Attachment 3 - a hotel folio for one night at the A-1 Budget Hotel, Klamath Falls, Oregon. Single room, free breakfast, no other charges. Bill signed by F.W. Mulder.Handwritten note attached: “Agent Scully, did you have another folio for your room on this one? Thanks, Moira.”





	Expense Report

**OFFICIAL MEMORANDUM**

October 20, 1995

Agent Scully,

As part of a Bureau-wide initiative to keep costs reasonable and appropriate, we are conducting an audit of expenses submitted in the last six months. Attached are items on which we request further justification. Please provide an explanation as to the business purpose of each receipt on the form provided. 

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Respectfully,

Moira Summers  
Accounting Department  
Federal Bureau of Investigation

* * *

**Attachment 1:** a mud-stained rental car receipt from Budget Rent-a-car in Pennsylvania including charges for interior cleaning, damage to front bumper, replacement right driver’s-side headlight. Additional insurance waived. 

_ The flashlight beam plays over the underbrush, casting wild shadows, turning tree branches into grasping hands.  _

_ “I swear to you, Scully, I saw it.”  _

_ “You saw  _ something, _ Mulder. I did too, but—“ _

_ A loud  _ crack. _ She can swear she hears heavy breathing. Her heart races.  _

_ They hit a deer, she reminds herself. This road cuts through a state forest, they’re in the mountains, it’s near midnight and the road is unlit, further obscured by a low-lying fog.  _

_ It’s only natural that there would be adrenaline surging through her body after that— _

Crack. 

_ She puts her hand on her weapon. Mulder lifts the flashlight and she sees it—impossibly tall, humanoid, hairy— _

_ “Scully, are you seeing this?” Mulder breathes.  _

_ And just like that, it’s gone. Too fast for something that large.  _

_ She hopes they didn’t hurt it too badly. It might be one-of-a-kind.  _

_ “It was a bear, Mulder,” she says, dutiful to her role as she pops open the passenger-side door of the rental. “There are black bears in Pennsylvania, and it’s mating season.”  _

_ Mulder’s grin slices through the darkness like the flashlight beam. “I know what I saw,” he says. “And so do you.”  _

_ Despite herself, she smiles back.  _

_ She knows exactly what they saw, and he knows that she knows, and it’s theirs alone.  _

  
  


**Explanation submitted:** Agent Mulder and myself were driving through a rural road in low visibility conditions at the time of this occurrence. A deer ran across the road and into our car. Repair expenses to rental vehicles when driver is not at-fault are covered under Bureau policy. 

* * *

**Attachment 2:** a much-crumpled, barely legible receipt from Thompson Family Pharmacy in Hiko, Nevada. Charges for antibiotic ointment, Dial soap, rubbing alcohol, sterile gauze, medical tape, acetaminophen. 

_ “I was close, Scully. I was so damn—“ Mulder flinches as she ghosts a hotel-white washcloth over his bloody knuckles. “—close.”  _

_ That’s what I was afraid of, she thinks, but doesn’t say. “This is a graze,” she says, instead, indicating the wound on his right shoulder. “Who was shooting?” _

_ He doesn’t answer. “I was close,” he says again.  _

_ She wants to yell, get right in his face. Demand some answers, a little truth of her own: What the hell did you think you were doing? Why didn’t you  _ wait _ for me?  _

_ Who are these men, these faceless shadows always baiting him, always letting him get right up to what he wants and pulling it back again?  _

_ Why do you let them do this? she wants to ask, but she looks at his expression, and she knows he’s thinking of Samantha. She knows why he does it.  _

_ One day, she’ll get there in time, and Mulder won’t be the one left bleeding. They’ll get his goddamn answers and  _ she’ll _ get payment for every hollow look he’s ever given her as she patches him up in a shitty roadside motel.  _

_ He shivers—shock and adrenaline finally winning out over anger—and she finishes covering his shoulder wound, helps him to the bed, piles blankets on top of him.  _

_ Then she moves to a chair by the door.  _

_ She keeps her hand on her gun until the sun comes up.  _

  
  


**Explanation submitted:** Medical supplies - I fell and scraped my knee while on assignment. 

* * *

**Attachment 3** \- a hotel folio for one night at the A-1 Budget Hotel, Klamath Falls, Oregon. Single room, free breakfast, no other charges. Bill signed by F.W. Mulder.  
Handwritten note attached: “Agent Scully, did you have another folio for your room on this one? Thanks, Moira.” 

  
  


_ It’s pouring down rain as they stagger out of the wilderness around Klamath Lake. No sign of the missing ranger they’ve been searching for with the local police.  _

_ “Agents,” the police chief nods at them. “We’ll hit it again tomorrow at sunrise. You got accommodations?” _

_ They do, or they thought they did.  _

_ The receptionist at the Super 8 is apologetic and frazzled when she can’t find their reservation.  _

_ “I thought you guys were supposed to leave the light on for us,” Mulder says, and smiles at the receptionist, taking in her name tag. “Come on Jeanine, there’s got to be something you can do.”  _

_ Jeanine blushes and melts a little, hemming and hawing about a friend who works at a place down the road, and Scully stops herself from rolling her eyes. The charm offensive is silly but her socks are soaked. She’ll let it slide, this time, if it gets her a hot shower. Once she’s in her room, maybe she’ll order a pizza. A mushroom pizza. With extra cheese. Side of whiskey.  _

_ Jeanine pulls through — sort of.  _

_ “Sorry, agents,” the receptionist at the place down the road says, handing them a single key. “Fishing tournament out on the lake this weekend, this is all I got left. Last room in town, probably.” _

_ “A double room?” Scully asks, the visions of pizza and hot showers and hopefully whiskey starting to recede.  _

_ “Uh, sure,” the receptionist says, averting her eyes. “Breakfast at 7am; it’s free.”  _

_ It  _ is  _ a double room. Technically. It has one double bed.  _

_ They put down their suitcases and Scully struggles out of her soaking jacket, but Mulder’s still standing there, looking at her. “You probably want a shower,” he says. “I’ll get us dinner.” _

_ They’re professionals. They’ve seen each other hurt, vulnerable, scared. They can share a room—a bed—for a night.  _

_ But the air feels charged. They haven’t talked about Nevada and even though she hasn’t thought about it since then, suddenly she’s back in that room, gun in her hand.  _

_ They haven’t talked about Mulder’s father, they haven’t talked about New Mexico… _

_ They haven’t talked about a lot of things.  _

_ “Thanks, Mulder,” she says, putting all that aside. They’re very good at putting things aside, the two of them. “Can you get—“ _

_ “Pizza, mushrooms, extra cheese,” he says, deadpan. “You should try new things, Scully, live a little.”  _

_ “If you get something other than pepperoni on your half, then you can lecture me on trying new things,” she says.  _

_ He smiles at her, and it’s different from the one he gave Jeanine.  _

_ Mulder’s not back after her shower, and the rain’s stopped. She finds a liquor store in the strip mall across the street and wheedles a lemon and a packet of honey out of the receptionist, and manages to jury-rig two hot toddies by the time Mulder gets back.  _

_ “It’s medicinal,” Scully says when Mulder raises an eyebrow at her.  _

_ “Well, who am I to argue with a doctor?” he says. “Salud.” And they clink the chipped mugs together.  _

_ They finish the pizza. (Mulder opens the box with a flourish, revealing half mushrooms and extra cheese, half pepperoni. “So much for living a little,” she says. “The refuge of the familiar, Scully,” he says. )  _

_ “You don’t really think Ranger Miles is a werewolf, do you?” Scully says, breathing in the steam of a second drink.  _

_ Mulder gestures to the window, where a full moon hangs high in the now-clear sky. “The claw marks,” he says, raising his index finger, “his silver cross necklace—which his wife claims he’s worn every day for the last ten years—with the clasp broken, found in his car with the engine running? And you think he’s not?”  _

Now _she rolls her eyes at him_. _ “We should get some sleep, if Chief Parker was serious about sunrise.”  _

_ Mulder emerges from the shower a few minutes later with a grin on his face. “Scully, what is  _ this?  _ A piece of the space shuttle? _ ”  _ he asks. He’s holding up a slim case with a flashing red light on it.  _

_ “Put my toothbrush  _ back _ , Mulder—“ _

_ “This is a toothbrush? It was playing music.” He’s laughing now.  _

_ “Dental health is extremely important, Mulder,” Scully says, as primly as she can, but she’s wearing pajamas and he’s wearing a thin white t-shirt and soft sweatpants, and the room is warm, it feels for all the world like a slumber party— _

_ She makes a grab for the toothbrush, he pulls it back, and she keeps going.  _

_ They crash together, laughing, and he holds her close.  _

_ “We saw Bigfoot in Middle-of-Nowhere, Pennsylvania,” he says. The rumble of his voice vibrates through her chest. “Admit it and you can have this thing back.”  _

_ “We saw something,” she says.  _

_ “Bigfoot.” _

_ “Something.”  _

_ “Not a bear?”  _

_ She sighs. “It wasn’t a bear, Mulder. Or a deer.”  _

_ He puts a hand on the side of her face, tentative. “You saved my ass in Nevada. As always.” _

_ She covers his hand with her own. “I know, Mulder,” she says. “Put the toothbrush down and come to bed.”  _

_ She expects him to know what she means.  _

_ And he does.  _

  
  


**Explanation submitted, handwritten note:** “Thanks for catching that, Moira. I lost my folio. You can just write this one off.” 

  
  



End file.
